David Cameron today branded poverty in Britain a "moral disgrace" which could best be tackled by shifting responsibility from the state.

In a speech to mark the 25th anniversary of the Scarman report into the Brixton riots, the Conservative leader shunned the traditional Tory view of poverty as "absolute" - where people have virtually nothing.

Poverty should instead be seen in relative terms to the rest of society, he said, as the point where people lack those things which others in society take for granted.

"Those who think otherwise are wrong," Mr Cameron said. "I believe that poverty is an economic waste, a moral disgrace."

The Conservatives not only recognised relative poverty as a term, but would measure and act on it in the future, he said.

But under a Conservative government, the poverty-fighting agenda would see a radical shift from state to "society" under the party's mantra of social responsibility.

"We will only tackle the causes of poverty if we give a bigger role to society," Mr Cameron said. "Tackling poverty is a social responsibility."

Mr Cameron, whose campaign to raise awareness of personal debt involves implying that people in debt were allowing the "tosser within" to make their financial choices for them, said a mixture of civic and corporate responsibility was needed.

Families, the public sector, and private industry all had to play a part, he said.

Mr Cameron criticised Labour's approach, which he said had focused on the redistribution of money through the tax and benefits system, rather than on tackling the root causes of poverty.

"This is what government should be focusing on.

"Instead, Labour rely too heavily on redistributing money, and on the large, clunking mechanisms of the state. Of course the state has a role to play in the fight against poverty."

Despite deriding Labour's efforts to eradicate relative poverty through a complex system of tax credits and benefits, Mr Cameron said tax credits would stay under a Tory government.

But giving extra help to those in work failed to capture those out of work, he said.

The solution lay beyond the welfare state through job creation and social enterprise zones.

"We must make getting a job an effective route out of dependence."

The Conservative party's faith in social enterprise and the voluntary sector to lift people out poverty should not be seen as "an agenda of spending cuts to finance tax cuts", Mr Cameron said.

His comments marked another break with the tradition of Margaret Thatcher, the former Conservative prime minister, and represent a fresh attempt to take on Labour on what has long been regarded as its own territory.

They follow a call by one of Mr Cameron's key policy advisers, Greg Clark, the MP for Tunbridge Wells, for the party to look for inspiration on social policy from Polly Toynbee, the Guardian commentator, rather than Winston Churchill.

Toynbee has written widely on the social exclusion faced by people living on benefits or in minimum-wage jobs.

Churchill, prime minister during the second world war and again in the early 1950s, saw social policy as defined by a ladder of opportunity with a safety net at the bottom for the very worst off.

Mr Clark, a member of the Tories' social justice commission chaired by Iain Duncan Smith, the party's former leader, warned that British society was in danger of being pulled apart if the poorest were allowed to fall ever-further behind the rich.